Bussines

Business Analysis Part II
Wikipedia is a “free online encyclopedia that anyone can add to or edit” (Educause, 2007). It was launched in January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. In May,they added the non-english versions of Wikipedia. The name comes from the Hawaiian word “wiki” that means “quick” that is used in the technology world to describe the method for creating collaborativewebsites. The model of editing they use include anonymous users, registered users and administrators. These last are chosen by the content they have edited in the past within Wikipedia and the commentsthey have received by other users for those articles edited. Actually the english version of Wikipedia has 3,613,404 articles and there are 14,371,241 registered users, including 1,785 administrators(Wikipedia, 2011).
Wikipedia has been the subject for big debates. For most people the fact that anyone can add, or edit or even remove information from the articles raises a red flag. The articlesare an easy target for vandalism, “intentionally posting inaccurate or defamatory information” (Educause, 2007) because everyone can edit the information. Also, many universities do not allow the useof citations form Wikipedia in the essays of students. Their argument is that Wikipedia doesn’t go through the process of peer review and edition that the other encyclopedias do. Other problem thatcould arise from citing information from Wikipedia in a paper is that the person reading the paper could go to get more information from that topic in the Wikipedia article cited and it may havechanged, someone could have removed that specific part that you cited. Also, “every article is only as good as those who have taken the time to write or edit it and quality across the site is uneven”(Educause, 2007).
On the other hand, Wikipedia has been proved to be just as reliable and credible as other encyclopedias. For example, in 2005 the company Nature conducted a study in which they had 50...